If there is one thing in the world that pisses me off (and obviously, there are very few things that piss me off), it’s vandalism. This incredible angst just sort of crept up on me last week when I was told that people won’t live in downtown Charlottetown because they are scared of the graffiti down there. Now, admittedly, this is kind of stupid, and anyone who is scared of graffiti should be living in Stanley Bridge or something, but the fact remains that there is a disproportionate amount of graffiti downtown. People somehow find it necessary to scrawl stuff on walls to tell the world what is going on in their head. Why? Because nothing says ‘I love you’ like spray paint on a rock face along the Cobequid Pass? Because you’re Straight-Edge? OoOoOo. That’s special. Oh. You’re anti-establishment? Wonderful. You know what? No one cares. Plus, if you believe in something so strongly, you shouldn’t need the attention of the general public to be validated as a person. You should also possess the common sense to discern how truly useless graffiti is. Some random business guy is not going to walk down Queen Street on lunch and see "Down with the system!" or "Screw ‘The Man’" written on a wall and think "You know what? They are SO right! What a great idea!" and then quit their job and leave their wife and 2.5 kids in suburbia and go live in the woods and become a vegetarian and eat roots all day. So what’s the point? Keep your stupid opinions to yourself and if you want to complain about the world and share your ideas that no one cares about, write an article in a student newspaper or something.
Vandals have been busy all over this city in recent months, ripping cords out of ATM machines here on campus, kicking over gravestones, defacing election posters, trashing statues at churches, etc. etc. Over Christmas people even cut down lights at people’s houses and, in Nova Scotia, someone stole a lot-full of trees that a youth groups was selling for charity. What the hell is wrong with people? Like fine, if you want to rob banks, steal cars, jump off buildings, snort crack-cocaine all day, go ahead, whatever. It’s still damn stupid, but at least you’re getting money or high or adrenaline or some sort of rise out of it. Painting up a wall or kicking over gravestones? Frig right off. I’m generally not a big fan of capital punishment or prison torture, but these are definitely the types of people that we should bring it back for. And Paul Allen.
Speaking of capital punishment, the California government executed another death-row inmate last week. Now, I am not going to criticize the death penalty in the US, hell I’m not even going to point out that capital punishment is largely counter-productive. They’re an independent country, they can make their own laws, and God knows, judging by the number of high-intensity debates we had in Junior High about this issue that it will likely never be resolved anyway. I do, however, sort of balk at the idea of executing a 76-year-old man who is in a wheelchair and legally blind after he waited 23 years on death row. I mean, if the very point of capital punishment is to punish felons and have the families of victims placated, what is the point of having the families of victims wait around for 23 years and meanwhile spending money to keep some guy alive so you can kill him? In September, this old guy, Clarence Ray Allen, nearly died when his heart stopped, but prison officials were like: "Oh no you don’t!", revived him, and put him back in his cell. Niiice. That’s another four months of room and board to pay for, plus health costs for a 76-year-old blind guy in a wheel chair. This is almost as bad as the system that the Americans have set up in Iraq. Remember Abu Gharib prison? Yeah, the one where American soldiers were torturing Iraqi prisoners? Well it was back in the news last week when the Americans decided to make the prison a, and I quote: "highlight [of] the progress toward democratic governance and the rule of law, demonstrating the involvement of Iraq’s government in the effort to provide both security and justice for all Iraqis." Wow. That sounds like a pretty sweet plan. How did they do this? Well by releasing 500 prisoners of course! Were these prisoners found innocent? Nope. Had they served their full-term? Heck no! They just opened the gates and off they went. The prisoners who were released, 500 of a full 1300 releasees in an apparent American ‘catch & release’ program, were asked to renounce violence and to pledge to be "good citizens" in the new "democratic Iraq".
Guard: "Do you promise not to do anything BAD?"
(Prisoner nods head)
Guard: Now Abdul, are you SURE you won’t do anything bad again?"
(Prisoner shrugs)
Guard: (chuckles) "Oh ya little kidder. Get outta here."
I don’t know, it just seems a bit contradictory to me. People being imprisoned without charge? Executing seniors? Prisoners who, in any other situation would be referred to as potential terrorists, being spontaneously set free? Riiight.
So some idiot sent me an email the other day telling me that MSN is shutting down for good (they’re serious this time!) and that I had better damnwell send it to my entire contact list unless I wanted to be screwed royally. Here, word-for-word, is that email:
Hey it is Andy and john the directors of MSN, sorry for the interruption but msn is closing down. this is because too many inconsiderate people are taking up all the name (eg making up lots of different accounts for just one person), we only have 578 names left. If you would like to close your account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you would like to keep your account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. This is no joke, we will be shutting down the servers. Send it on, thanks. WHO EVER DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOU WILL COST 10.00 A MONTH TO USE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD THIS or REPLAY. COPY THE WHOLE EMAIL. GO BACK TO YOUR INBOX AND CLICK ON NEW. AND PASTE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
I am dead serious. Someone actually sent me this in fear of losing their MSN privileges. Listen there Andy and John, you idiots. Even if you are real people, do you think that people are going to believe that the entire MSN system is left in the hands of two dumbasses who can’t even spell words like ‘message’ and ‘reply’ and who don’t even have a simple grasp of the mechanics of the English language? Who the hell takes the time in their day to write this shit? There is absolutely no gratification to this, unless you’re the type of person that gets a rise out of having gullible idiots are sending this message on in perpetuity. Newsflash! You know those emails about some kid in Bolivia who got trampled by a herd of sheep and needs a billion dollars cash by this tomorrow or he’s done for? Yeah, didn’t happen. I mean I am impressed with the imaginative bullshit these people come up with, but even if there was some truth to any of these stories, sending an email to your contact list isn’t going to do a damn thing for them. It’s not going to propagate a miracle, it’s not going to force the Bolivian government to invest in Health Care or in better sheep fencing, and Bill Gates sure as hell is not going to give the kid a buck everytime some moron sends the email. Never mind that there is no accurate way of keeping track of how many times the email gets sent, it is just, plain and simple, a stupid idea.
Has anyone watched Family Feud in the past 7 or 8 years? That is the most obnoxious and seizure-inducing half-hour on television. It’s even worse than that stupid King Cole Cup of Cash draw. Are these people on crack? No matter what stupid answers these jerks come out with, the whole bunch of them go completely berserk, clapping their hands and shrieking. It’s like Tourette’s Syndrome on speed. "GOOD ANSWER! GOOD ANSWER!!!" No. No it wasn’t. You didn’t get shit. Shut the hell up. Where do they get these people? Unit 9? Utah? The Church of Scientology? And who the hell hired Al Borland as host? Yes, the infamous Richard Karn has replaced the massive Louie Anderson, a man whose voice could stun and kill a deaf ox at 50 yards, as host. Of course Karn isn’t much of an improvement. I think his only qualification was the fact that he was also a fat aging white guy. If my grandmother didn’t enjoy the show so much, I think I’d have to fly down to L.A. and punch Karn in the face. Him and the Golden Girls. And listen Dick; it’s SUR-vey, not SHUR-vey. Moron.
And finally, election time has come and gone in Canada once again. Well yippee-ay-oh-kay-eh. I am writing this before most people have cast their ballots, so obviously I can’t say for definite sure who our Prime Minister is as you are reading this, but my guess, judging by the "shoot ourselves in the face" campaign strategy of the Liberals, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that good old Stephen Harper is at the helm. And not that this scares me all that much, per se, it’s just that his stupidity during the campaign kinda weirded me out a bit. We need to give seniors tons of money because "seniors fought for us in two world wars for us…" Well Stevie, this is partly true, but seeing as there are only four guys alive in Canada that were actually enrolled in the military during World War I, I wouldn’t try to go ride that World War I wave too much. Sigh.
Have a good one!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
...And now for something completely different: The Rants of a University Student (#34)
Well, the New Year came in with a bang this year, particularly for those of you who happen to live in the general area surrounding Brown’s Court and Queen Street. For anyone who was not present that evening, I think a friend of mine described it best when he said “Oh my God. Brown’s Court is like Rwanda!” This was almost entirely true, except for the fact that Rwanda is not filled with drunken idiots. Yes, the large hordes of youth who chose to ring in the New Year by hanging around Brown’s clearly drank responsibly, as indicated by the hundreds of broken beer bottles on the ground the next morning, and to act in a civilized and mature manner, insomuch as ripping the door off building 17, throwing a mattress in the hallway and somehow causing a ceiling leak can be considered as mature and responsible behavior. As always, the wonderful long arm of the law, personified by the elite Charlottetown Police Department, acted valiantly in controlling the situation as the officers in the sole squad car on the scene opted to stay in their car and do absolutely nothing. Wonderful.
Christmastime on PEI was once again a joyous occasion, a time for love and joy and trees and turkeys and for relatives to tell you how bad they had it when they were kids. I heard some Baby-Boomer going on about it the week before Christmas: “Kids today get the Gameboys and the iPods and those cell phones. We only got oranges and socks. And we were damn happy to get it.” Well aren’t you all just paragons of virtue and unfettered selflessness? How can my generation ever possibly meet the impossibly high standards of your oh-so-wonderful and possibly greatest generation of all time? Give it a rest. We don’t care about your damn oranges. It sort of loses its’ quaintness after you whine about it for 40 or 50 years. Hey, at least you didn’t have to fight and die for your own freedom like the two generations did before you. And at least your parent’s generation didn’t totally screw you over by depleting pension plans and social programs to the point that there was no money left by the time you got to retiring age even though you had to pay for it through the nose for your entire career like we’re going to have to do. Phht. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Other than whining, the other great Canadian Christmas tradition continued this year. The World Juniors, were held in Vancouver, as Canada beat the snot out of every team they faced, with only 6 goals scored against them.
Of course all of this could not have been done without the gracious aid of the American coaching staff, who, when tied with Canada late in the third thought “I know! We can pull our goalie!” Uh huh. Good one. Canada of course scored an empty netter, clinching first place and a bye to the semis. Even though the US needed the win, it was still probably the stupidest move in modern sport as a) their goalie was by far the best US player on the ice, and b) they were playing Canada, the World Cup, Olympic, and World Junior Champions, who, believe it or not, are pretty good at scoring on a net that has no goalie in it. No wait, I take that back. The stupidest move in sports was during last year’s semi final in the World Juniors, when the US was losing 4-2 to Russia, and, (surprise, surprise) pulled their goalie. Russia scored two empty-netters, and then after the Americans had the sense to put him back in, the Russians scored on the powerplay with one second left. Final score: USA 2 - Russia 7. God Bless America.
This year’s series culminated in a 5-0 Canadian win over the Soviets, who before the game predicted that mother Russia would “dominate” Canada. Riiight. The Russians were pretty peeved that a goal they scored went uncalled because no one saw it, with their coach arguing that they would’ve probably won had it been called. Um no. Then it would’ve been 5-1. Idiots. Some people felt that Russia was cheated in the non-call and that it could’ve changed the game, but for myself, I consider it payback for the 2003 Gold Medal game that we lost, where the Russian netminder hit the net off its moorings with 10 seconds to go in the game, a move that should have resulted in a penalty shot for Canada. Of course the Russians and Canadians put this all behind them, shook hands after the game, and drank Smirnoff and beer late into the night while making fun of the goalie pull-happy Americans.
Well I was informed after my last rant that some people were offended by my attack on the efforts of the Charlottetown Transit busses to decorate for the holidays. In that article I commented that the trolley-busses looked ridiculous by saying, and I quote “Ding ding! Here comes the shit-mobile.” Well, I am sorry for anyone that offended, but that is exactly what the bus looked like. I was not attempting any sort of attack on the bus system as a whole, indeed I am well aware that Charlottetown needs a transit system, I know the schedule is getting better, and that more and more people are using it. Hell, I wasn’t even all that pissed off when the first time I tried to get on the bus that it drove right past me. Jerks. My question is more me wanting to know why the hell we had to get busses that look like trolleys. For once, could we please just get something normal? Not something named after Anne or Confederation or potatoes or any of that nonsense, nothing to do with history or heritage or tradition: just normal damn busses. It would be more environmentally friendly, they wouldn’t have to use pine benches for god’s sake, and we could actually ride them with a bit of dignity. For some reason, one model that has been decided on for our fair city is one that is supposed to look like trolleys from 1608. What in the hell? 1608? This has absolutely no historical basis in Charlottetown. First of all, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a mass transit system in 1608, seeing as our first transit system was developed in, yes, you guessed it, 2005. Secondly 1608 is about the same time that Samuel Champlain founded a little village called Quebec, while Black Plague and scurvy is still killing off the Brits, and John Smith is getting his ass saved by Pocahontas. Seeing as nothing was established anywhere near Charlottetown for another 111 years, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we didn’t have a fleet of trolleys messing about the forest in 1608. Maybe a few Co-op cabs, but that’s about it.
Have a good one!
Christmastime on PEI was once again a joyous occasion, a time for love and joy and trees and turkeys and for relatives to tell you how bad they had it when they were kids. I heard some Baby-Boomer going on about it the week before Christmas: “Kids today get the Gameboys and the iPods and those cell phones. We only got oranges and socks. And we were damn happy to get it.” Well aren’t you all just paragons of virtue and unfettered selflessness? How can my generation ever possibly meet the impossibly high standards of your oh-so-wonderful and possibly greatest generation of all time? Give it a rest. We don’t care about your damn oranges. It sort of loses its’ quaintness after you whine about it for 40 or 50 years. Hey, at least you didn’t have to fight and die for your own freedom like the two generations did before you. And at least your parent’s generation didn’t totally screw you over by depleting pension plans and social programs to the point that there was no money left by the time you got to retiring age even though you had to pay for it through the nose for your entire career like we’re going to have to do. Phht. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Other than whining, the other great Canadian Christmas tradition continued this year. The World Juniors, were held in Vancouver, as Canada beat the snot out of every team they faced, with only 6 goals scored against them.
Of course all of this could not have been done without the gracious aid of the American coaching staff, who, when tied with Canada late in the third thought “I know! We can pull our goalie!” Uh huh. Good one. Canada of course scored an empty netter, clinching first place and a bye to the semis. Even though the US needed the win, it was still probably the stupidest move in modern sport as a) their goalie was by far the best US player on the ice, and b) they were playing Canada, the World Cup, Olympic, and World Junior Champions, who, believe it or not, are pretty good at scoring on a net that has no goalie in it. No wait, I take that back. The stupidest move in sports was during last year’s semi final in the World Juniors, when the US was losing 4-2 to Russia, and, (surprise, surprise) pulled their goalie. Russia scored two empty-netters, and then after the Americans had the sense to put him back in, the Russians scored on the powerplay with one second left. Final score: USA 2 - Russia 7. God Bless America.
This year’s series culminated in a 5-0 Canadian win over the Soviets, who before the game predicted that mother Russia would “dominate” Canada. Riiight. The Russians were pretty peeved that a goal they scored went uncalled because no one saw it, with their coach arguing that they would’ve probably won had it been called. Um no. Then it would’ve been 5-1. Idiots. Some people felt that Russia was cheated in the non-call and that it could’ve changed the game, but for myself, I consider it payback for the 2003 Gold Medal game that we lost, where the Russian netminder hit the net off its moorings with 10 seconds to go in the game, a move that should have resulted in a penalty shot for Canada. Of course the Russians and Canadians put this all behind them, shook hands after the game, and drank Smirnoff and beer late into the night while making fun of the goalie pull-happy Americans.
Well I was informed after my last rant that some people were offended by my attack on the efforts of the Charlottetown Transit busses to decorate for the holidays. In that article I commented that the trolley-busses looked ridiculous by saying, and I quote “Ding ding! Here comes the shit-mobile.” Well, I am sorry for anyone that offended, but that is exactly what the bus looked like. I was not attempting any sort of attack on the bus system as a whole, indeed I am well aware that Charlottetown needs a transit system, I know the schedule is getting better, and that more and more people are using it. Hell, I wasn’t even all that pissed off when the first time I tried to get on the bus that it drove right past me. Jerks. My question is more me wanting to know why the hell we had to get busses that look like trolleys. For once, could we please just get something normal? Not something named after Anne or Confederation or potatoes or any of that nonsense, nothing to do with history or heritage or tradition: just normal damn busses. It would be more environmentally friendly, they wouldn’t have to use pine benches for god’s sake, and we could actually ride them with a bit of dignity. For some reason, one model that has been decided on for our fair city is one that is supposed to look like trolleys from 1608. What in the hell? 1608? This has absolutely no historical basis in Charlottetown. First of all, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a mass transit system in 1608, seeing as our first transit system was developed in, yes, you guessed it, 2005. Secondly 1608 is about the same time that Samuel Champlain founded a little village called Quebec, while Black Plague and scurvy is still killing off the Brits, and John Smith is getting his ass saved by Pocahontas. Seeing as nothing was established anywhere near Charlottetown for another 111 years, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we didn’t have a fleet of trolleys messing about the forest in 1608. Maybe a few Co-op cabs, but that’s about it.
Have a good one!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)